use Time::Local qw( timelocal ); use strict; my @input = reverse qw( Order_29May11:05.bak Order_11Jun20:25.bak Order_10Jun14:16.bak Order_10Jun16:04.bak ); # reversed to prove it works since they are already sorted my @months = qw( Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec ); my %months; for (0 .. $#months) {$months{$months[$_]} = $_} # merlyn's definition of the # Schwartzian Transform # changed to numerical sort my @output = map { $_->[0] } sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] } map { [$_, expensive_func($_)] } @input; print join "\n", @output; exit; sub expensive_func { # convert filename to date $_[0] =~ /Order_(\d+)(...)(\d+):(\d+)\.bak/ or die "bad filename $_[0]"; return timelocal(0, $4, $3, $1, $months{$2}, 0); } __OUTPUT___ Order_29May11:05.bak Order_10Jun14:16.bak Order_10Jun16:04.bak Order_11Jun20:25.bak